Small-Town Nostalgia

Skateland

Shiloh Fernández plays a rink manager in "Skateland," Anthony Burns's take on small-town life in the '80s.Credit
Freestyle

Blondie and Foreigner rule the soundtrack, and the roller-skating rink is front and center in “Skateland,” Anthony Burns’s sweetly nostalgic re-creation of small-town Texas in the early 1980s.

It’s a place that the 19-year-old Ritchie (Shiloh Fernández) seems unable to leave. Becalmed since high school, Ritchie spends his days managing the rink and hanging with friends, unwilling to use his nascent writing talents on a college application. His sharp girlfriend (Ashley Greene) would like him to get a clue, but his best friend (Heath Freeman), a sad, romantic fabulist and washed-up motocross racer, needs someone to ride shotgun in his continuing battle with the local louts.

But Ritchie’s world of El Caminos, vinyl records and Jordache jeans (the costume designer, Kari Perkins, began her career on Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused”) is slowly breaking apart. Using a conventional coming-of-age story arc — divorcing parents, the closing of a beloved local hangout — to showcase his young performers, Mr. Burns (who grew up in Longview, Tex.) captures the beat of small-town time. Skaters’ bodies glide in circles, like their lives, poignant reminders that few would break formation.

Shot in wide, rich frames by Peter Simonite, the film’s dreamy fluidity leaves us unprepared for the sickening suddenness of inevitable tragedy. Though leaning too heavily on period tunes and the templates of Mr. Linklater and John Hughes (to whom the film is dedicated), Mr. Burns has a distinctly spacious style that gives female characters room to breathe. As Ritchie will discover, sometimes a man needs a woman to convince him that there’s more to life than cars, parties and the Dairy Queen.